Presentations

Sophisticated Techniques to Use in SSRS

Today, SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) are only as good as how quickly you can develop and deploy reports in a rapidly changing data and business world. Templates and sophisticated techniques can bridge the difference between your development and the business’ expectations. This session encompasses a series of techniques and rapid deployment methods to meet those standards. We step through functionality using Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) embedded in SSRS reports, multivalued parameters combined with stored procedures, template re-usability, and consistency throughout to form a scaled development, deployment, and production model.‏

Techniques for Dynamic SSRS Reports

Do you need a navigation system within your reports? Do you suffer from report sprawl, having hundreds of reports written once and disappearing into the reporting services catalog never to be executed again? Would you like to see one report take the place of fifty?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, then join me in this demo heavy session. Not only will we address the questions above, but we’ll talk about providing different layouts to the data in the same report, minimizing data based on the user’s credentials, and even techniques for colorizing various parts of a report using VBA code. These techniques will help make your reports user friendly and help you look like a reporting superhero.

Changing Your Habits to Improve the Performance of Your T-SQL

Do you dread handing your T-SQL over for code review? Do your queries run slower than you expect? Does the DBA always want to tweak your T-SQL? In this demo heavy session, we’ll take a look at various ways to improve your T-SQL. You’ll learn about formatting T-SQL for readability and why top down design is not the best solution for writing T-SQL. You’ll learn why implicit conversions slow queries down and how to leverage simple techniques for minimizing the performance impact of explicit conversions. By changing some of your T-SQL writing habits you can improve performance of queries from the very beginning.

Silent Killers Lurking in Your Schema

A good database design goes deeper than the rules that Codd gave us. We need to leverage SQL Server to help enforce the Codd’s. In this class we’ll look at some common questions like: I have foreign keys, why do I need foreign key constraints too? Why are smart keys not so smart? If I use an identity field, do I still need to declare it as a primary key? The wrong answers to these questions can slow your queries down over time and even create bad data. Join me in my session as we look at demos to understand how silent killers can begin to lurk in your schema.

Creating User Friendly SSRS Reports

Do you need a navigation system within your reports? Would you like to consolidate similar reports, but still make them specific to your user’s needs? If you answered yes to either of these questions, then join me in this demo heavy session. You’ll learn different ways to add navigation to your reports. You’ll learn different methods to reduce the data in your reports and to customize the look of the reports based on the users. These techniques will help make your reports user friendly and help you look like a reporting superhero.

Scalable SSRS Reports Achieved Through the Powerful Tablix

Did you know that the Table, Matrix, and List controls are all based on the highly flexible Tablix Data Region Grid? So really, they are all one control that can be morphed into each other.

Learn how to get the most out of the Tablix controls in this demo-heavy session. We’ll go through how to best layout data using multiple Tablix controls. We’ll use parameters to change the layout of the data in these controls to minimize the number of reports that need to be maintained. We’ll create a columnar report that grows vertically as well as horizontally, and we’ll find out about other exciting uses of this highly flexible control.

Creating SSRS Reports Efficiently Through Best Practices

You always have more report requests than you can possibly fulfill. Wouldn’t it be great if you could speed up the generation of reports? Templates can streamline the life cycle of a report for the whole team. In this session, you’ll learn how templates in your tool belt can help you efficiently gather requirements, quickly design mock-ups, and standardize the look and feel of your SSRS reports.

Reports don’t stop changing once they’re released into production, and some reports are phased out over time. Wouldn’t it be great to have a way to keep track of the changes a report takes on in production over time? We’ll talk about how to keep track of change requests, how to analyze the utilization of existing reports, and how to track changes in users for the reports in production.

Improve Your T-SQL by Changing Your Writing Habits — Red Gate Style

Do you dread handing your T-SQL over for code review? Does the DBA always want to tweak your queries? Do you always forget that error handler or the syntax of Common Table Expressions? In this demo-heavy session, Mickey Stuewe will look at ways you can improve your habits. You’ll learn how to format code for readability, why top-down design is not the best solution, how to templatize the T-SQL in your personal arsenal for easier reuse, and performance tips like how to search for implicit conversions. By changing your writing habits you can improve the performance of your queries and your own performance, right from the outset.

Recommended Reading

I love books and I read every single day. Here is a list of books that I have either read or referenced the content of. I will add to this list as often I can, so check back often.

SQL Server Execution Plans – 2nd Edition By Fritchey, Grant (B|T). This is a must have book if you are learning how to read Execution Plans. He goes through and explains all the main Execution Plan icons and their pros and cons. You can get this book three different ways.

Attend an event where Red Gate has a presence and they will GIVE YOU a copy.

Expert Cube Development with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 analysis Services by Webb, Chris; Russo, Marco; Ferrari, Alberto. When I created my first prototype using SSAS I needed to create a bridge table, but I didn’t know what it was called. I found this book which talked about how to create one. I then read the rest of the book. It was very well written which made it easy to read.